Let's Book It for June

It's time again for the "Let's Book It" link up, Sharon at Vroomans Quilts idea to give us a gentle push to make quilts we already wanted to make, genius right? 

The T-Shirt quilt I made took up a big part of June, but I managed to make this adorable quilt.

They're not elephants, but who doesn't like a nice bright duck?

I really liked the twisty lines around him, it looks like the kind of plumbing I might do. That part was easy, but a "pay attention" type which holds my interest. 

I used this Just Ducky pattern by Bonnie Johnson and Loretta Shriner. I just happened to have the duck die for my GO! cutter so that part was quick and easy.

I left off the large border because...well I just wanted to.

I found the pattern here, McCall's Quick Quilts Oct/Nov 2011 and another magazine is out of here. Yes! I'll be blowing the dust off of another one getting ready for July.

If you aren't already linking up to "Let's Book It" you should be, we all have those books, magazines, patterns, whatever, that we collect to make something from. Pick a pattern, make the quilt and link up. So easy. I wonder if getting rid of an old magazine counts for house cleaning this month?

Later Gators,

Dana 

The T-Shirt Quilt and Cuteness

First let me thank everyone who gave me advice on t-shirt quilts, I read everything and took your advice and got it done. After seeing a picture on pinterest I decided to leave out any sashing and not do straight rows, lots of Y seams, yikes!

This is the original layout I came up with, that's laid out on my king size bed, so you can get an idea of the size. Of course as I sewed them together the lay out changed a few times as the seams ate up some of the size and things didn't fit.

This is the finished quilt, It was big and surprisingly heavy, I quilted each block individually, some just outlined, others had straight line quilting, the one time I sewed into one of the "plasticy" numbers, my thread broke. 

She had also saved his sheets and pillowcases from his childhood and I used them for the back, fussy cutting those strips of football and basketballs really added a lot. 

I'm ridiculously proud of it and have a lot of respect for t-shirt quilters, it's not easy. I won't be jumping in to make another one right away, although I did promise my daughter one from all of her sorority shirts, she's going to wait :)

Now for the cuteness. On Saturday my daughter agreed to drive an hour south, while I drove an hour north to meet up at the zoo. Thank goodness she's indulgent with me because no one else would go, everyone just looked at me like I was crazy, I'm pretty sure that Zoo Miami in June is mentioned as a level in Dante's Inferno. Plus as I drove out of the Key's, traffic trying to get in was backed up for 20 miles, literally. If you live here you know to just hunker down on holiday weekends. 

But this is why we went!

Lion babies were finally on display.

Look how adorable they are

This guy is two months older than the others, his mama died and there was a lot of concern about him, but his aunt took him into her family, even the father lion has accepted him :)

This was our favorite, smaller than the rest she would follow along behind them, get about half way and just plop down and watch the people. 

I took over 150 pictures of them, LOL, well worth the heat to see so much beautiful cuteness.

Later gators,

Dana